On July 24, 2026, Judge Sarala V. Nagala of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut granted summary judgment to plaintiff Conservation Law Foundation (“CLF”) on Count Fifteen of its Clean Water Act citizen suit against Pike Fuels Limited Partnership (formerly, Gulf Oil), holding Pike liable for failing to maintain an impermeable secondary containment area at its bulk petroleum storage terminal on New Haven Harbor. Conservation Law Found., Inc. v. Pike Fuels Ltd. P’ship, No. 3:21-cv-00932 (SVN) (D. Conn. July 24, 2026). Kanner & Whiteley’s Allan Kanner and Chad Molnar serve as co-counsel for CLF in the action. Citing “overwhelming” evidence—including reports from Pike’s own environmental consultants dating to 2011—the Court found that from at least 2011 until Pike sold the terminal in April 2024, a period of more than thirteen years, the secondary containment area was permeable; that Pike knew of the problem; and that Pike failed to rectify it, leaving the liner its consultants had recommended unfinished when it sold the facility.
With liability on Count Fifteen established, the case proceeds toward a penalty determination in which Pike faces civil penalties of up to $68,445 per day for the violation. See 33 U.S.C. § 1319(d); 40 C.F.R. § 19.4 tbl.1 (2026). For a continuous violation spanning approximately thirteen years, the potential penalties amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Judge Nagala will convene a status conference to schedule trial on the remaining counts—while the Court dismissed CLF’s climate-change-planning claims and certain monitoring claims, CLF’s claims concerning unlawful stormwater infiltration and impaired-waters monitoring at one outfall survived Pike’s cross-motion for summary judgment—and will renew the referral of the action to U.S. Magistrate Judge Garcia for a pre-trial settlement conference.
The Court’s decision is available below.